


Legacy

by MajorMinor



Series: marvel characters i'll never get to make comic canon [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Mutants, Angst, F/F, Lesbian Character of Color, Multi, Original Character-centric, POV Original Female Character, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25101136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorMinor/pseuds/MajorMinor
Summary: In 2012, the world put its trust in heroes. But while the Avengers might have saved the world, Marlena's continued to crumble after the dust settled. Thrust into Shield's custody, Marlena is forced to walk a dangerous line between trusting the strangers that have sworn to protect her, and defying that trust to find out the truth about her family's mysterious connections.
Series: marvel characters i'll never get to make comic canon [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2073084
Comments: 3
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

Marlena awoke with a gasping start. She bolted upright but stopped halfway through her rude awakening when pain shot across her torso. Her hands shook as she rubbed them back and forth across her stomach to try to soothe the aching. 

“Ow.” she groaned.

As she sat trying to keep the pain at bay, she realized that she was in, well she wasn’t exactly sure. She blinked a few times before her eyes finally adjusted to the light around her. She looked around and noticed the few things in the room; a small table and chair on the opposite wall and two doors, one leading outside the room, and another leading to a bathroom. 

Slowly, she sat fully upright in the cot she was lying in, trying to not disturb whatever was causing the pain in her torso. She had changed out of the shorts and t-shirt that she’d put on earlier that day and into a standard hospital gown. Or rather, she’d been changed out of them. In the corner of the room, she saw her clothes folded neatly on a chair. Well, she assumed they were her clothes. The jeans could have easily been the pair she'd been wearing earlier that day, and the shoes were the same strappy black sandals that she had worn almost every day of summer so far. But she distinctly remembered putting on a green tank top that morning. It had been too hot to wear anything else, and Marlena would rather  _ die _ than wear a t-shirt in a shade of yellow that bright. 

“What the hell,” she whispered.

She turned her head to look out the window on the door leading to the outside of the room. Marlena took a sharp breath in to brace herself as she slid off the cot and slowly shuffled to the door. Her legs were stiff and heavy, and just the few steps across the room left her feeling winded. When she reached the door, she pulled on the handle, but it wouldn't budge. 

She took a few deep breaths to calm herself and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. After a moment, she opened her eyes and pressed her face harder against the glass, trying to see what all was visible from the room. 

It was a small field of vision, but the best that she could describe what she was seeing was a very empty hospital corridor; gray walls, gray floor tiles, harsh fluorescent lights. There was some ease in the thought of this being a hospital, at least she knew she was safe. But then that brought the question of what exactly she was supposed to be safe from. __

Marlena knocked on the glass. “Hello?” she called out.

Nothing.

She tried the handle again. Still nothing. 

Not knowing what else to do, she pounded on the glass in frustration and shuffled back over to the cot. She sat there for minutes, that could have easily warped into hours, questions bouncing off her skull like a Windows '97 desktop screensaver. 

She was in some sort of hospital, but what for? She ran the events of her day through her mind, trying to piece together a mental map that could help her now. School had been out for summer for two weeks, so she'd probably woken up sometime close to noon. She remembered washing the dishes but not eating breakfast, then going to take the trash out, and after that taking a walk down the street to the bodega for what was probably her umpteenth blue raspberry slushie that week. But after that, nothing. No walk back home, no chores, no hours clicking through YouTube. She couldn’t remember anything. But there was something that had happened, or else she wouldn't be in this room, with this pain, and these questions. 

Just as she was starting to think this was some kind of nightmare, the door swung open, and a woman walked in. She was tall and had a very commanding presence, one that would garner rumors of some dark past or military experience if she was a teacher at Marlena's high school. She was dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt, which only made the questions Marlena had churn harder in her head. She was in a hospital, but this woman was dressed for a normal day out. But the way she carried herself definitely didn’t scream Casual Friday or a quick trip to Whole Foods. Something was off, or rather, something was hidden, but Marlena couldn’t figure out what.

“My name is Maria Hill.” the woman started. “I know you must be a little scared,”

_ Must be is an understatement.  _ Marlena thought.

“But you'll have the answers you need soon enough. I'd suggest you go ahead and get dressed.” Maria continued.

“Then what?” Marlena asked, finally breaking her silence. She tried to keep her voice as steady as she could, trying to show this Maria Hill woman that whatever was happening, that she wouldn’t be afraid. But there was only so much toughness Marlena could manage, especially with so many gaps in her memory as to how she’d gotten here in the first place.

“Then you'll learn why you're here. You'll be fine, I promise.” Agent Hill answered.

Marlena didn’t say anything. Maria Hill spoke like an agent from a sci-fi movie. She half expected her next sentence to be “We’ve waited a long time for you,  _ Chosen One _ .”

“I'll be right outside the door if you need anything,” Hill said, pulling the door shut behind her as she walked out. 

Marlena waited until the door clicked shut to get off the cot, grab her clothes, and go into the bathroom. She leaned forward, holding herself steady against the small sink, taking in deep, shaky breaths, trying to reassure herself that she was safe.

“It’s okay,” she whispered to herself. “You’re okay Marley. You’re just in some weird-ass hospital, with Maria Hill. You’re good. Everything’s fine.”

The mantras didn’t do anything to calm herself though. Was she okay? Was she safe? Every question bouncing around in her head broke off to another one and another one, and then another after that. Where was she? How did she get here? What was going on? What was going to happen? 

Slowly, she started to peel out of the hospital gown, but even her slow movements sent jolts through her midsection. When she was completely out of the gown, she looked down and saw a puckered, stitched up scar about the width of her palm running horizontally across her abdomen. 

She inhaled sharply through her teeth as she reached down and touched it lightly with her fingertips. Since Hill hadn't mentioned needing to have the wound dressed, then Marlena felt that it was safe to assume that it was a minor injury that looked worse than it actually was, but that didn't stop the worry of how Marlena had obtained such an injury from seeping in. 

There was no use in mulling over it at the time being. Hill had said that she would soon have the answers as to why she was here, which seemed a lot more important than the paper cut she had running across her stomach. 

She finished getting dressed and found Hill waiting on the other side of the door. “You ready?” Hill asked.

Marlena nodded.

Hill stepped aside, giving Marlena some room to walk beside her and lead the way. At the end of the first hallway, they reached an elevator. The doors slid open, and Hill gestured Marlena to step inside. 

“Unauthorized personnel detected,” an automated voice called out suddenly, “Please contact security.”

“System override, director's orders,” Hill said. 

The elevator pinged in response, the doors slid shut behind Hill, and they started their ascent. 

Marlena stood to Hill's left, keeping her eyes glued to the elevator doors. She didn’t want to stare, but she wanted some sort of visual clue as to who Hill could possibly be, and what ties she had to Marlena, but trying to do that in such a small space made Marlena nervous. Hill was sure to notice, and Marlena didn’t want to run the chance of this, well whatever it was between them, to be something hostile if Hill caught her wandering eyes. 

But her curiosity about Hill was pushed aside when the lighting in the elevator changed drastically. It went from the same harsh fluorescent lighting of the hallways and room that they had started in, to natural sunlight. She noticed that it was coming from behind them, and looked over her shoulder to see the DC city skyline through the glass wall of the elevator. 

“What is this place?” Marlena asked, not noticing that she’d done so audibly until Hill answered. 

“Shield headquarters.” 

“Shield?” Marlena repeated, snapping her head around to look at Hill, “Aren’t those the guys who were in New Mexico last summer?” 

Hill nodded. “That’d be us.” 

Marlena furrowed her eyebrows together. Her brain was cranking out even more questions now. She tried not to focus on them, knowing that it would only give her a headache to try and figure out the answers on her own. Hill was supposedly taking her to get those answers now, and with every second that ticked by, Marlena was starting to wonder if she even wanted them anymore. She’d woken up in the comfort of her home, and was now with a woman who worked for the people who had discovered a literal g-d in the middle of the desert. Was it even worth trying to figure out what happened, or just jump straight to the conclusion that Marlena had completely lost her mind sometime between now and then? 

The elevator came to a halt, and the doors slid open, revealing a wide office. In the center of the room, there was a desk, and a man standing behind it. He was tall, black, and dressed like he stepped out of a  _ 007  _ movie. But most notably was the eyepatch over his left eye. 

Hill gestured into the office, “After you.” 

Marlena looked between Hill and the man in the room. He was looking right at her. 

The man said, “Good to see you’re up and moving.” 

Marlena didn’t respond. 

“Hill,” he said, “give us a few minutes please.” 

“Yes sir,” Hill said. She stepped past Marlena to leave the elevator, and walked across the office to a door on the other side, and left the room. 

“You can sit down if you want,” he said to Marlena. 

It had only been a few seconds since Hill left, and Marlena had known her for all of five minutes, but Marlena wanted her back in the room. She was the first person she saw when waking up into this scenario that wasn’t quite a daydream or nightmare and wanted Hill to be there just for the comfort of having another woman present. But Hill was gone, and it was just her and this man at Shield headquarters. 

“I don’t want to sound like I’m rushing you,” the man said, “but there’s only so long that I can override the entire building’s security protocol before someone comes looking to see why.” he gestured to a chair in front of the desk, “Please,” 

Slowly, Marlena stepped out of the elevator and started across the room. She sat down in the chair, and without wasting a second, the man started speaking. 

“All of this must be very confusing. But I’ll try to keep this as simple because there’s a lot to go over.”

There was something about him that worried her. He didn’t seem threatening, or rather, she didn’t allow herself to think of him as threatening. This entire situation was already stressful enough without fearing for her life. He was worrying to her because his demeanor felt off-kilter. His presence should have dominated the room. Everything about him, the way he was dressed, the way he looked, his physicality, it all should’ve been more than enough to make Marlena shrink down in her chair. But she didn’t. 

He looked as if he was more scared of her than she of him. His body language was tense, and even though his voice was steady, it sounded like he was struggling to keep it that way as if he had to rehearse it before she’d come into the room.

None of it made any sense, which was only going to stress Marlena out even more if she thought about it too much. 

“I'm Nick Fury, Director of Shield.” He waited a few seconds for her to say anything, but when she didn’t, he continued with, “I don’t know if there’s any,” he let out a sigh, “any  _ easy _ way of saying this.”

“Nothing about my day has been easy,” Marlena said quietly. “I just want answers.” 

Fury nodded slowly. “What’re your questions?”

“Why am I at Shield?”

“Yesterday afternoon, there was an attack in New York,”

“Like, the Twin Towers or…”

“No, nothing like that. This was an extraterrestrial attack.” The way he said it made it clear that even though he witnessed this attack, the reality of what he had just said was finally weighing in on him.

Marlena didn’t know how to react. Aliens had attacked New York, and somehow that put her here. Well, not  _ somehow _ , that had to be the direct event that put her here. But why was  _ she _ here specifically? Why wasn’t she in a triage center or hospital? Why wasn’t she on the ground with her,

“Where’s my mom?” Marlena asked suddenly. Realizing now that she hadn’t thought about her mother until now made her feel guilty, her mom was surely worried sick about Marlena’s whereabouts.

“Where’s my mom?” Marlena repeated.

Fury’s lengthy pause and sorrowful stare gave Marlena her answer.

She felt the tears on her cheeks, and lip trembling, but no sound escaped her throat. What was there to say? Even if all she thought she could manage was a choked sob, even then that felt out of place. She felt like she should have been screaming, wailing, doing  _ something  _ other than sitting stiffly in a chair, and crying because aliens had killed her mom.

Just thinking that fact felt ridiculous, it almost pulled a laugh out of her. Aliens had killed her mom, and now she was in the custody of a secret government agency. Wild wasn’t the word to describe it. There wasn’t a word in the world to describe how running that fact back and forth through Marlena’s mind made her feel disoriented, angry, sad, and oddly curious all at once.

“I’m sorry.” Fury continued.

“Why am I  _ here _ ?” Marlena asked again. Same question as before, but with knowing what she knew now, there was something more that had put her in this chair in front of this man.

“That’s not an easy answer to give.” Fury said.

“Just tell me,” she demanded.

Fury nodded slowly and reached into a drawer in the desk, pulled out a manilla folder, and slid it to her. Marlena took it and noticed the words ‘For Nick’ written across the cover in cursive with blue ink. She recognized it immediately as her mother’s handwriting.

She opened it, the first page had another note in her mother’s handwriting.

_ This is the last you’ll ever hear from me. If you follow me, I’ll have no choice but to kill you. _

“How did you-” Marlena started to ask, looking up to Fury. He didn’t answer, just pointed down at the folder, urging her to keep reading. 

Marlena turned to the next page, which was a paper id of sorts. Her mother’s picture was paper clipped to the top corner. It had to have been taken before Marlena was born because, in it, her mother’s hair was still relaxed, much different from the box braids and natural updos she had worn throughout Marlena’s childhood.

The lines beneath had information that confused her. The first few were general information; name, date of birth, height, and so on and so forth. It was the following ones that gave Marlena the first dent in this giant marble slab she’d just been handed. 

  
  


_ Grant, Sarah Y.  _

_ Current Project: CLASSIFIED _

_ Formerly Stationed: Shield Triskelion, Washington DC _

_ Date of Station: 19/04/1993 to 29/11/1994 _

_ Currently Stationed: CLASSIFIED _

_ Date of Station: 01/12/1994 to Present Date _

_ Station Requested: Not Applicable _

_ Reason for Request: Maternity Leave _

  
  


“What is all this?” Marlena asked. 

“Back before you were born, your mother was a scientist that worked with us on various projects.” Fury said, “Those papers were the last records that we have of her here at Shield before she left to have you.” 

“Was it something dangerous?” Marlena said, referencing the redacted information. 

Fury shrugged his shoulders. “To be honest, I’m not quite sure what it was that she was working on. I was still riding desk duty for the most part while she was working with Shield.” 

Even though Fury had just told her that there had been an alien attack the day before, hearing about her mother’s previous occupation felt like a much larger shock. It was such a stark contrast to the perception that she had had of her mom. Sarah Grant was a smart woman for sure, Marlena never would have survived her pre-calc class without her help on homework, but Sarah Grant had always just been the kind, quiet woman who managed the gift shop at a museum. 

But her mom being a scientist for Shield still didn’t answer what exactly tied Marlena to this specific moment. She figured there had to be hundreds of other kids with parents that worked at Shield, and none of them ended up in a meeting with the director after a personal grievance. 

“You two were related?” she tried. 

Fury shook his head. 

Her mind clicked into place. 

All her life, it had just been she and her mother. Marlena had been told that her father had died when Marlena was young, but never how. It was something that Marlena never questioned as she got older, she’d just always assumed that her mother wouldn’t want to dwell on the fact that her husband had died so early into Marlena’s life. 

“He was your son,” she said.

Marlena’s mother always told him that her father had been killed a few weeks after her fifth birthday. She didn’t remember much about him or anything of her life before the first grade. Having the realization now that the man sitting in front of her was her grandfather cracked the dam of memories open in Marlena’s mind. All the struggling her mother had gone through trying to support them, the kids at school that said her father had left, the lack of photos of him around the apartment. 

“What did you do?” Marlena asked. She knew she was jumping to conclusions, but why else would Fury have her here if all of this had just been caused by her mother’s death. He had to have known about her all these years if he had found her in the last twenty-four hours when she hadn’t even so much as thought about the possibility of having a grandfather since she was still in the single digits.

Had Fury been watching her and her mother all these years? Watching and waiting for the perfect opportunity to swoop in and drop the atomic bomb of information, completely shattering all of Marlena’s comfort and knowledge of what she thought her life was.

“I don’t know how to answer that.” Fury said, plain and simple.

“How did you find me?” Marlena tried instead.

“When the attack started, your mom contacted me, said she figured this had to have something to do with Shield. When the dust settled, I was able to find you and your mother, but she was already gone by the time I got to you.” 

Neither one of them said anything else. She had been in the room for five minutes tops, and had only sat in a chair and cried the entire time, had barely said a hundred words. But hearing everything she had known about life as she knew it, both personal and universal, be unraveled in just under five minutes had put a drain on Marlena like nothing she had known before. No bodily ache or emotional stress from any other point in her life compared to the hurt and confusion she was feeling now from just sitting in a chair and asking questions.

It all felt too insane to be real. Aliens attacking New York was easier to believe than this. 

“Can I see her?” she asked. 

Fury opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. 

“Where is she?” 

“Marlena,” he started, but he stopped. 

“ _ Please. _ ” 

“I can’t do that for you right now.” Fury said. 

“That’s bullshit,” she said, her voice rising. “You can stop an alien army but you can’t let me see my mom?!”

“It’s not  _ safe _ Marlena.” Fury said sternly, his tone overpowering her volume. 

Her face twisted in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about? She’s dead, not a friggin Chernobyl victim. I want to see my mom!”

“I’m not trying to be the bad guy here Marlena,”

“Then be the good guy and let me see her!” her voice echoed throughout the room. 

Fury paused for a few seconds before continuing. “No one except me and Hill knows you’re here, and I have to keep it that way. You being related to me already makes things far too complicated to explain right now.”

Marlena scoffed at that. “Okay, I guess.” 

“And I don’t have her here,” he added. 

“You  _ what. _ ”

“Marlena, this is a lot more complicated than you’re understanding,”

“Then uncomplicate it,” she said bluntly. 

“This isn’t just some,” he sighed heavily before continuing, “there are some things that are even out of my control, even I have a boss. I wanted to be able to give Sarah,”

Marlena made a face at hearing Fury say her mother’s name. She knew he meant nothing of it, but with everything that he had just told her prior, it made her slightly uncomfortable to hear him say it so casually. 

“I wanted to give your mom,” Fury adjusted before continuing, “the burial she deserved, but I couldn’t do that without pulling too many strings and someone finding out about you.” 

“So you can smuggle a whole kid into a government building, but not one dead body?” Marlena asked, defeat seeping into her voice. 

“I did all that I could on short notice.” Fury said. “The most important thing right now is keeping you safe.” 

Marlena slumped back in her chair. She hadn’t moved more than a few inches since she’d come into the office, but her energy was gone. She sat with her arms dangling uselessly at her side, too tired to even sniff the snot running from her nose.

Her mother was gone, and she couldn’t even get one last parting glance. 

The last memory she would ever have of her mom was from the night before, when she was fussing at Marlena about getting a summer job. 

“You can’t sit in front of that computer all summer.” was the last thing that Marlena remembered her mother saying to her. 

It hadn’t even been a particularly bad argument, but if Marlena had known that that would be their last night together, she would have done something other than rolling her eyes when her mom walked out of the room, and stay up all night watching Netflix. 

First, she learns her mom is dead, her father’s death became more of a mystery to her, her grandfather was running a government agency, aliens were real, and now, she couldn’t even give a posthumous goodbye to her mom. But the worst offense out of all that was knowing now that her mother had been lying to Marlena about her life for as long as she could remember.

“This is insane,” she muttered. 

“I know this is a lot to take in,” Fury started, “but it’s the way things are. I wish I could change that for you.

She took in a deep breath and exhaled heavily. She was tired of being in this room and having every other word out of Fury’s mouth be a new Earth-shattering revelation. All she wanted to do now was find somewhere to lay her head and wake up to all of this being some terrible nightmare. 

“Now what?” she asked. 

“I’ve made arrangements for you to live with someone for the year, just until you turn eighteen.” Fury explained.

“Who?” 

“The woman you met earlier, Agent Hill. She’s the only person I can trust with this.”

“Why can’t I just live with you?”

“Your mother thought it was best to keep you away from me for all these years so that you’d be safe. So, I’m going to trust that her judgment was best and keep the world spinning for you as closely as they were before.”

“Well, what is it that I need to be kept safe from?” Marlena asked. 

Fury sighed and simply said, “I’m not sure.”


	2. Chapter 2

Her remaining time with Fury was short, with few words exchanged. He let her keep the folder with her parents' information, and walked her to the door that Agent Hill had stepped out of. On the other side, Hill was standing in the hallway, scrolling away on her phone, almost looking like she was bored while she’d been waiting. 

Marlena looked at Hill in a new lens now. Just ten minutes ago, she was a weird woman, waking her up in a weird room, leading her to get answers about her weird life. But now, she was supposed to live with her for an entire year. It was going to be interesting to see just how exactly they’d move on from their tentative introduction to suddenly being thrust together for an entire year. 

“Hello again,” Hill said. 

“Hi,” Marlena said. 

“I have to go now,” Fury said, “Not many people know about this, and I have to keep it that way, but I'll see you soon.”  
“See you around, I guess,” Marlena said. She didn’t like the uncertainty of when her next meeting with Fury would be. It could be tomorrow, next week, randomly bumping into him at the grocery store. The way he had said it made it seem like he himself wasn’t even sure of just when ‘soon’ could possibly be. 

Fury laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and squeezed it before letting Hill take over. 

“C’mon,” Hill said, “let’s get out of here.” 

Marlena gave one last parting glance at Fury, before nodding and walking with Hill down the hall. They reached another elevator, although this one looked like it was strictly for service staff. When they stepped inside the doors, and Marlena looked down the hall again to where the entrance to Fury’s office had been, he was gone. 

The doors slid shut, and they began their descent. Neither one of them said a word, but the tension was palpable. Marlena knew that there had to be some part of Hill that was just as uncomfortable with this situation as she was. Alien attack one day, and babysitting your bosses’ estranged grandkid the next? Hill was either getting one hell of a pay-raise or was the only person at Shield who could babysit worth a damn. 

The elevator stopped and opened up to a parking garage. Hill led the way to an old Subaru hatchback parked in the first few spaces from the elevator. Marlena stopped a few feet away from the car and simply stared ahead as Hill continued to walk a few more steps before noticing that she’d stopped.

“Everything okay?” Hill asked, taking a few steps towards her.

Marlena shook her head and said, “I just, you can’t,” she stopped and sighed, “you guys can’t  _ seriously _ believe all this is gonna be this easy.”

“Marlena,” Hill started.

“No, just don’t, okay?” Marlena said sternly. “I’m tired, and none of this makes any damn sense, and I just,” she stopped before she could finish her sentence.  _ I just want my mom. _

Hill looked at her with a gentle expression. “There’s probably no band-aid saying of sympathy that I can give you that Fury hasn’t said already, and I know that’s probably not what you want to hear anyway. But the simple fact of the matter is that this is your life now. Yes, this is terrible, and no, I don’t expect this to be easy, but for right now, this is the way things are. And I’m not saying this to offend you or give you any ‘tough love’, but the sooner you can accept your reality, and adjust to it, the better off you’ll be. I promise.” 

Marlena could tell that Hill was being genuine in her response, though it didn’t mean that was what she wanted to hear. 

“Whatever,” she said. “Let’s just go.” 

Marlena walked past her to the car and waited for Hill to unlock the door. They got in, and were on their way to the main road, and then the highway. Neither one of them said anything, save for Hill’s quiet humming to the songs playing on the radio as she drove. Marlena kept her eyes out the window, watching the busy DC streets go about their day as if the world hadn’t come close to ending just a few hours earlier. 

It felt inappropriate for her to be out like this. She felt that she should be shut in somewhere, mourning her mother properly, or at least have more than a few minutes to process all that she’d just been told. The world felt like it was moving too fast for everything that she had just learned. For the few seconds that her mind would clear, it would quickly be clouded with thoughts of her life just one day before, and then of aliens in New York, only for that to be taken over by the fact that she would never get to see her mom again, only for  _ that  _ to be taken over with the fact that she had had more family this entire time that her mother never told her about. 

It was giving her a headache, and even though Hill and Fury had both told her it was better to accept and move on than try to hang up on what was or could have been, she couldn’t do it, not yet anyway. Barely an hour had passed since she’d woken up in that bed, and now, here she was, starting a new life in a city she had never been to, with a woman who probably hadn’t even known Marlena was alive six hours earlier. 

She groaned and rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes. 

“You okay?” Hill asked, turning down the radio’s volume.

“G-d. No.” Marlena groaned. 

She wasn’t going to cry, she was trying to keep herself from screaming at the top of her lungs. The inside of her head felt like an alarm was going off, blaring with nothing but questions, questions, and more questions. Hill wasn’t going to answer them, because Fury barely had. All he had done was tell her that her mom was dead and that she wasn’t safe, but couldn’t even come up with some band-aid statement to tell her what it was that she wasn’t safe from. And she was just supposed to trust all of that? 

She didn’t doubt Fury’s rationale that she was probably safer living with Hill. She looked less, well less threatening than Fury had. A woman in her mid to late 30s with a professional look about her being a single mom in DC was probably a lot easier to cover for than someone like Fury whose eyepatch and stature was sure to draw attention to him wherever he went. 

“I just, I’m confused,” Marlena said. “Fury throws all this information at me, and then packs me up to go live with you for an entire  _ year _ because he’s trusting the judgement of a dead woman, who lied to her own daughter for her entire life.” she flapped her hands frantically, all of this was making her antsy, and she knew that if she didn’t calm down, she was going to hit something. “None of this makes sense, and you give me some band-aid statement about accepting and moving on, but I don’t even fully understand what I’m supposed to be moving on  _ from,  _ let alone what I’m supposed to move towards.”

She felt like she should have said all of this to Fury, though she knew that Hill needed to hear this from her too. It felt cheap to go after the only person in her day so far that had no direct action in landing her where she was, but Hill was the only person she was probably going to interact with for the next twelve months, so better to get all this off her chest now rather than later. 

“I’m gonna be honest with you Marlena,” Hill said, “this is confusing for me too.” 

Marlena didn’t doubt that. There was no way that Hill didn’t have to give up something in her life or career to watch her for the next year. A cozy apartment, maybe a boyfriend, a job that was surely much easier than the one she was about to take on. All there one day, and gone for the foreseeable future. 

“Yesterday, one of my friends was brainwashed by an angry alien god and tried to shoot me,” Hill continued, “and today, I’m moving into an apartment I’ve never seen before with my bosses’ grandkid.” 

“And you just let Fury do this to you?” Marlena asked. 

“Well he didn’t  _ do _ anything to me. He thinks I’m the best person to take this on. I’m better suited for much more dangerous shit,”

“Like fighting your murderous brainwashed friend,” Marlena interrupted.

“Exactly,” Hill said, her tone lifting slightly with a laugh, “so if Fury thinks that I’m the best person to watch you, then I’m gonna take it as a compliment. He doesn’t just trust his life, or the life of someone he cares about, to just anyone.”

“But do you trust him?” Marlena asked. “Fury said that I’m supposed to be kept safe from something. How do you know that this  _ something _ isn’t gonna ruin your life, or y’know, end it?” 

Hill’s expression hardened at the question. She was quiet for a few moments before saying. “I trust him enough to know that he wouldn’t make a decision like this easily. Even if this is what your mom wanted, it wasn’t an easy choice to pick me, or anyone else, to do this job. He made a split-second decision, and if he trusts me enough with everything from yesterday, and everything moving forward to give me this job, then yeah, I’d say I trust him a whole lot more than I can trust myself.” 

Marlena didn’t say anything to that. It felt like the first genuine response she had gotten out of anyone so far today. It had only been a few minutes with Hill, but Marlena was appreciating her candor about the situation, even if it wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear. 

But despite that, Marlena’s mind was stuck on what Hill had just said and what Fury said to her back in the office when she asked what it was that she was supposed to be kept safe from;  _ I’m not sure. _

Hill might have trusted Fury’s judgment, and Marlena was supposed to trust that judgment as well, but it was hard when the man in charge couldn’t give either one of them an answer on who or what, was out to get them. 

* * *

The drive from Shield to the apartment building couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes. But because of the constant snowballs of revelations being thrown her way, and the new surroundings, it felt like it had taken an hour. It was then that Marlena realized that it wasn’t even eleven in the morning yet, as the clock on the car’s dashboard flashed 11:34 in neon numbers. 

“I’ll say one thing,” Hill said as she parked the car, “at least we don’t have to actually unpack anything.” 

They got out of the car, and Marlena followed Hill into the building, through the lobby, and to an elevator. 

“Swear to G-d if I get on one more elevator today, I’m gonna scream,” Marlena grumbled. 

“If you wanna take five flights of stairs, then be my guest,” Hill said, pushing the button to the aforementioned floor. 

The doors opened, and thankfully there wasn’t anyone waiting on the other side ready to shatter her perception of her life any further. They walked down a few doors to apartment number 508, Hill took out a set of keys, passed a spare to Marlena, and opened the door. 

“Home sweet home,” Hill said, stepping through the doorway. 

It was modest in every sense of the word. The doorway led into a living room, which was already furnished with a couch, tv, and coffee table. To the left was a kitchen and dining room barely large enough to fit the dining table and not much else. 

“The stuff that was able to be salvaged from your apartment is already in your room.” Hill said, “and I think a laptop’s coming for you later today or Monday. I’ll let you know.” 

“Okay. Thanks.” Marlena replied. She left the living room and walked down the hallway. She pushed open the first door she came across, finding the bathroom. “We don’t have to share do we?” Marlena called down the hall.

“No, don’t think I’d have taken this job if they didn’t at least give us separate bathrooms.” Hill laughed. 

Marlena nodded and went to the next door, which led to a bedroom that was clearly hers. Like the living room, it was furnished with the essentials to keep her comfortable; a bed, a desk, a dresser, nightstand, and even a small tv set up on a bookshelf on the opposite wall from her bed. It was enough to keep her from complaining. 

There was a box placed in the desk chair, labeled “Marley’s Things” in black Sharpie. Something about the implication that either Hill or Fury writing out ‘Marley’ instead of ‘Marlena’ didn’t sit well with her. Sure, it was what everyone called her after knowing her for about two seconds, but she didn’t want to reserve the right of her nickname to the two people who were the biggest thorns in her side at the moment. 

Closing the door behind her, she dropped the Shield folder Fury had given her on top of the box, carried it over to the bed, kicked off her shoes, and sat cross-legged to inspect its contents. Everything inside had some level of damage to it, which made her stomach sink a little at the thought of what state her home was in after the attack. There wasn’t much inside, not even enough to fill up the box past the halfway point. On top, there was her stuffed polar bear named Slushie that she had for as long as she could remember. His nose was gone, and he looked more beige than white now, but she was glad to have him. Underneath that, there her yearbook from her freshman year, her CD case, a couple of graphic novels from her room (all of them charred at the edges and one of them missing its cover), and a composition notebook. 

The last item she didn’t recognize as hers. There were always a handful of notebooks lying around the apartment because of school work, and her mother’s furious journaling habit, but Marlena’s own would usually be spiral notebooks with her name scribbled across, accompanied by dozens of doodles from days and days of zoning out class. 

As for her mother’s journals, Marlena never paid much attention to them. Her mother always respected Marlena’s space enough to never go through her things, so Marlena never had the urge to read through her mother’s journals. Even now, seeing that this clearly had to be one of her mom’s journals, she couldn’t bring herself to open it. Even if the pages would hold the answers to everything that had brought her life to this moment, she knew she wouldn’t be able to handle another secret being unearthed today.

She threw the notebook back into the box and picked up the folder to do the same, but a piece of paper landed in her lap. It landed face down, and when she picked it up and turned it over, she felt all the air go out of her lungs. It was the picture of her mom.

She had seen it earlier that day in Fury's office, but something about seeing it now felt like someone had punched all of the air out of her lungs. When she'd seen it earlier, she thought her mom was still alive, and even after she found out she was gone, she couldn't even have the comfort of seeing her body one last time. There weren't any scrapbooks in the box of her things, surely they had been destroyed in the attack. This was the only picture she had left of her mother. 

“Oh G-d,” Marlena whimpered, tears already rolling down her face. She knew her mother was dead, it was the only reason that she was sitting in this room, with a woman she didn’t know down the hall, in a city she had never been to, trying to play catch-up with a life full of secrets that she hadn’t even known she was living. But something about that picture being the last physical shred of evidence that she’d been alive sent Marlena over the edge. 

She let out a loud sob that got the attention of Hill.

“Marlena?” Hill’s voice called down the hall, followed by her footsteps creaking against the hardwood floor. Hill knocked on the door and called for Marlena again. “Is everything okay?” 

“Go away.” Marlena cried. 

“Marlena,” 

“I said go  _ away! _ ”

Hill didn’t say anything else. She heard the floorboards creaking as Hill walked back down the hall. When she heard the faint sound of the tv switching on, Marlena let out another sob and pulled her legs up to her chest, holding her mom’s picture close. 

None of this felt real, but worst of all, none of it felt  _ right. _ The massive discomfort of being in a new place so suddenly after having her world yanked from her feet with nothing more than a few minutes of explanation felt like a violation that Marlena didn’t have the words to describe. 

She couldn’t handle the secrets that were so plainly laid out in front of her, that no one was willing to provide the answers. Fury had said that it had only been yesterday since the events that put her here happened, and G-d did it feel like it. It felt like her mother had thrown them together hastily before she had died, almost as if she knew her time had been coming and left something that was clearly meant to be explained to her by Fury. But with Fury refusing to answer her, what was she supposed to do?

Everything felt as alien as the ones who had wrecked her home. There was no comfort in the safety Hill was supposedly providing her, no thoughts of any of this ever feeling normal to her, no cushy future of college, and living as a normal young adult. This was her life now, but it felt like a crater. Her life was the Earth and her mother had been the meteor that tore through the atmosphere and ruined all of the carefully created life that Marlena had known for seventeen years. 

She needed to get out of here and back to safety, the  _ true  _ safety that she had known in New York. She wanted to run out the front door, and take the train back to Brooklyn, back  _ home _ . Everything couldn’t have been destroyed, there had to be something left. If she went now, she could make it there by early tonight, walk back down those familiar streets, up the steps to her apartment building, and see her mom coming down the stairs to take out the trash before she went to bed. 

“Marlena!” she would say, “I have so much to tell you.” 

“Mom?” Marlena asked. Something was off, it was her mom, but not her mom the way that she was in the picture, taken so many years ago. 

Marlena stepped closer, and as she did, it was like a fog had been lifted from her eyes. She was looking at her mom alright, but she was decaying rapidly. Skin a moldy green, eyes sunken so far into her head that the whites looked like distant halos in a dark cave. 

“There’s so much you don’t understand.” her mother said. The flesh of her face rotted away as she spoke, unhinging her jaw. Marlena rubbed at her eyes, trying to get herself out of this nightmare. When she looked again and saw her mother's rotting face still in front of her, Marlena made a disgusted noise and turned to run out the door, but something large and fleshy appeared before her, blocking her path. She opened her eyes and was caught in the embrace of a man she didn't recognize. 

His face was just rotted as her mother's, and he looked like a much younger version of Fury, but with both of his eyes. It was her dad. 

“You’re perfectly safe here,” he said, but not with his mouth. The words flowed from a gash across his throat, red and throbbing as he breathed. 

Marlena’s eyes snapped open and she gasped for air against the comforter. She scrambled out of bed, almost tripping over herself as she tried to run away from her father grabbing hold of her. She stood in the middle of her room, hands swatting at her chest where she had run into her father in her dream. After a few seconds, she calmed down, breathing heavily as she realized that there was no one in the room with her. She was perfectly safe. 

The light in the room had darkened, it had to be late afternoon by now. Everything was still as she had left it when she nodded off. Had she really cried herself into unconsciousness? How long had she been out for? And most importantly, how much of her sobbing had Hill heard? 

Outside the door, she could hear the soft sounds of the TV playing what sounded like some sports event. She hobbled over to the door, her body was stiff from sleeping in such a tightly curled position, but her abdomen hurt worst of all. In the muss and fuss of everything that had happened since that morning, she had somehow forgotten about the mystery scar running through there.

She opened the door and hobbled down the short distance to the bathroom. Hill heard her and called out her name, but Marlena didn’t answer. In the bathroom, she sighed in relief when she found that it was already stashed with towels, all the essential toiletries, and a plush lavender bathrobe. In the medicine cabinet, she also found a pill bottle. It had her name on it and was filled to the brim with a new dosage of SSRIs. 

She had been on anxiety medication for as long as she could remember. It had been such a normal part of her day to wake up and find her daily pill on a napkin next to whatever her mother had made for breakfast. Even after Marlena was well into grade school, her mother always set out her medication for her as if she was a kindergartner. 

Before today, she had never really questioned why she needed the medication, but assumed that it was for whatever anxiety disorder was surely lingering from the trauma of losing her father at such a young age. That and the fact that school had never been a walk in the park for Marlena. Sure, she was smart and passed classes without much issue, but socially, Marlena struggled. One of her worst memories was of ninth grade when she had an anxiety attack in the middle of class all because the volume of her classmate's conversations had gotten too loud. It was an embarrassment to return to school after two days off to the whispers and side glances of her peers. 

Seeing the bottle now, she thought it was a little strange. Had Fury known about her medication beforehand, or had he just assumed she would need it after all that she'd been through? Either way, Marlena didn't want to start taking it again. She was really doubting that the meds would be able to cover full-blown PTSD the same way it could general anxiety disorder. She closed the cabinet, slowly stripped out of her clothes, and hopped in the shower. 

Once she was done, she put on the bathrobe and went back to her room. She went to the dresser and found that it too had been prepped for her arrival. Taking out a pair of sleep shorts and a t-shirt, grabbed Slushie and burrowed under the covers. But Marlena was hardly tired enough to go back to sleep. Her mind was exhausted, but her body was wide awake from the nap earlier and the shower. That on top of her fear of another nightmare, Marlena knew sleep wasn’t going to come anytime soon. 

A knock came on the door. “Marlena,” Hill said on the other side, “I ordered Chinese for dinner. I didn’t know what you wanted so I just got a little bit of everything.” 

When Hill asked, Marlena noticed just how hungry she was. As much as she wanted to hole up for the rest of the night, and stare off into nothing until her mind was empty enough to fall asleep, she knew that wasn’t an option. 

There was no use in hiding away in her room, she’d have to come out and engage with Hill and her new surroundings at some point. The more she put it off, the harder it was going to be later on. It was May sixth, and Marlena’s birthday wasn’t until April twentieth. Not an entire year, but it would feel like an eternity getting through the next eleven months and fourteen days. Hill had told her it was better to accept and move forward, so why not start that process with some food to wrap up this hellish day? 

“Okay,” Marlena said flatly, though she doubted she had spoken up loudly enough for her to hear. She was too hungry to ignore the beckoning smell of egg rolls and fried rice, even though she wanted to do nothing more than curl up into bed and shut out the last day. But she had done that earlier, and nothing more than a nightmare had come to her. There wasn’t an escape from this. 

She let out a groan, kicked off the covers, and left Slushie on the pillow. Out of the bedroom and down the hall she went to a short dinner of egg rolls fried rice with Hill. It wasn't comfortable, but she didn't have any other choice, and nowhere else to go. It was time to adjust.


	3. Chapter 3

The first night in the house had been a rough one. After she ate dinner with Hill, she went back to her room and tried to sleep again, but flashes of the nightmare kept coming back. That paired with the anxiety of sleeping in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar woman across the hall made her shake and sweat the entire night. She debated getting up and asking if Hill had any melatonin or Ambien just so she could get through the night, but stayed in bed despite her troubled thoughts. 

When she finally managed to doze off, the sky was transitioning to the pale pink of early morning. That day she slept in late, by the time Hill had finally come to wake her up, it was well past noon. She tried to make small talk, asked her how she slept and how she was feeling, but Marlena shrugged it all off with “okay”, “fine”, and most importantly, “Is there anything to eat?”

“I made banana pancakes. They’re cold, and we gotta buy a new microwave, but they’ll make due.” Hill had said.

Marlena nodded, and waited for her to leave before getting out of bed and getting dressed, or more accurately, to switch into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that she hadn’t slept in. 

She made her way to the kitchen, where sure enough, a plate of pancakes was waiting on the counter. Hill was washing the dishes, not paying Marlena much attention as she walked past her to grab the plate of remaining pancakes on the counter next to the sink. She tore her pancakes and ate them cold without syrup, too embarrassed at the fact that she hadn’t thought to get them before sitting down. Hill must have thrown a glance over her shoulder and noticed because a few seconds later, she passed Marlena a clean fork and said, "There's syrup in the pantry if you want it."

"Okay. Thank you." Marlena replied. She didn't get up to grab the syrup. She ate in silence and Hill finished the dishes before sitting down in front of Marlena at the table. 

There was a palpable tension between them. It wasn't hostile or angry, it was just...well it was weird. 

"How're you feeling today?" Hill asked. 

_ Great, I had a nightmare about my zombie parents. So, same as usual. How about you? _

Marlena shrugged her shoulders "I'm fine."

"Sleep well?" 

Marlena knew that Hill probably hadn't meant it as a way to instigate her crying fit 

She sighed and stopped chewing, letting her fork clatter onto the plate.

"I'm sorry," Hill said, "seriously, I didn't mean to upset you."

"I'm not upset," Marlena said. 

“Is there anything you wanna do today?” she tried again, her tone a bit more pressing, trying to get some sort of positive reaction out of her. “The weather is supposed to be nice, it’d be a shame to spend the day inside.”

“No thanks.” 

Hill didn’t ask her anything else after that. Marlena finished her pancakes, washed her plate, and went back to her room. 

She spent her first four days in the apartment in that pattern. Wake up, shower if she hadn’t done so the night before, eat, clean up, back to her room, meals at random, and staring at the ceiling until the sun rose to start the whole cycle over again. On the third day, Marlena’s laptop was delivered, just as Hill had said the week before. At least now she could have something to do as she stayed awake all night trying to stave off nightmares. The temptation to Google her mother was at the back of her mind every time she booted it up. Fury had told her that she had been a scientist, so there had to be at least one research project that she had been credited on. The search proved futile after several attempts of searching ‘Sarah Grant’, ‘Sarah Yvette Grant’, and ‘Sarah Grant Scientist’, only to come up with Facebook profiles and a shoddy looking online science course for elementary school kids. 

On the fifth day, she woke up and went to the kitchen for breakfast, a few bites into her pancakes however, she stopped chewing and spite out her mouthful. 

“You okay?” Hill asked looking up from her work at the coffee pot. 

Marlena shook her head and grimaced. “No.” She looked back at her pancakes and her stomach churned at the thought of having to eat another bite. “Is there  _ anything _ else to eat?” 

“There’s Cheerios in the pantry,” Hill said. 

“We don’t even have bacon?”

“We have turkey bacon.” 

Marlena groaned and got up to clean her plate. “Are you in between paychecks or something?”

Hill laughed at that. “Hardly. I was gonna go to the grocery store tomorrow.” 

“Can we go today? If I have to eat another pancake or anymore Hamburger Helper I’m gonna be sick.”

“I don’t see why not. You make a list and I’ll do the rest.” 

“Cool,” Marlena said. She finished cleaning her plate and went back to her bedroom to find something to write the grocery list on. The only paper in her room were the notebooks in the box that had been brought over from New York, and she sure as hell wasn’t eager to open that up. After her nightmare the first night, she had shoved it into the closet and hadn’t so much as looked at it since, and planned to keep it that way. 

She got dressed in a pair of shorts, flip flops, and her old gym shirt from ninth grade. Before going down the hall, she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she opened the medicine cabinet, she was yet again greeted by the bottle of pills. She hadn’t touched them since her first night in the apartment, and Hill hadn’t asked if she had taken them, hadn’t even said much of anything to Marlena aside from calls for meals, and checking in to make sure that she was alright before going to bed. Hill either trusted Marlena to be responsible enough to take care of medication, or it wasn’t that big of a deal. She ignored the bottle, same as she did every time she opened the medicine cabinet, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and went to the living room where Hill was waiting on the couch.

Marlena got a pen and paper from her and jotted down a quick list of essentials and a few things that Marlena wanted for herself. 

_ Pop Tarts _

_ Toaster Strudels _

_ Frosted Flakes _

_ Chips n Salsa _

_ Popcorn _

_ Salad  _

“Marlena I’m not gonna let you live off of junk food,” Hill said looking over the list. 

“Pancakes don’t count as junk food?” Marlena asked. 

“It’s a breakfast food.”

“So are Toaster Strudels,” Marlena replied flippantly. 

Hill laughed and shook her head. “If you say so.” 

Hill grabbed the keys and ushered Marlena out the front door. Stepping down the stairs and out to where the car was parked on the curb, Marlena was shocked and a little embarrassed to realize that she hadn’t been outside in a week. The sunlight was beating harshly against her eyes, and she asked to borrow Hill’s shades once they were in the car. The ride to the grocery store was short, and the pair wasted no time going through Marlena’s list. 

“Okay, I’m choosing the rest of the groceries,” Hill said, taking the list from Marlena’s hands, “I don’t want Fury firing me because I couldn’t get you to eat a balanced diet.” 

“I can still get my Pop Tarts though, right?” Marlena asked. 

“Sure. You can go run and get em. I’m gonna go grab some vegetables.” 

“Okay.” Marlena turned and walked a few aisles down until she found the breakfast foods, and of course, Cinnamon Brown Sugar Pop Tarts. She picked up a box (and a few other breakfast junk foods) before going back the way she came to look for the produce aisle. 

It was midday on a Friday, so the store wasn’t too crowded. Some soft rock station played over the speakers, customers milled about, clerks restocked shelves, nothing was out of the ordinary. So why was Marlena feeling so trapped all of a sudden?

She took too much attention to the way she was breathing, short, sharp breaths, as she wandered about the store, realizing that she had lost track of what exactly it was that she was supposed to be doing. Refocusing her breathing, Marlena shook her head and noticed that she had accidentally walked in the wrong direction. It wasn’t like the grocery store was huge, why couldn’t she focus on where she was going? 

Refocusing again, she turned around to go toward the produce to find Hill. Focusing on her steps to keep herself steady, zeroed in on her breathing to make sure she wasn’t going to hyperventilate herself into passing out, paying attention to the music on the speakers, and not the store clerk walking toward her. They collided, not even that hard, but the sudden contact snapped Marlena out of her concentration, but she didn’t refocus on the world around her. 

The cool of the tiles should have been a relief against the heat coursing through her body, but the moment her thighs touched the floor, she went spiraling, not even noticing that she had been falling in the first place. She threw her hands over her ears and closed her eyes, breathing rapidly as she tried to calm herself. 

_ One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi… _ Marlena counted, trying to keep herself calm. The soft sounds of the grocery store started to fade but were replaced with something much worse. When she opened her eyes, her entire world was gone. 

The street was ablaze, her apartment building she’d spent so many years in was a pile of brick and ruins, the sounds of gunfire, screams, and an alien language filled the air around her. Something landed on the street behind her with so much force that Marlena nearly cracked her forehead against the ground as she stumbled forward from the shock. She held her hands out to catch herself and did an awkward half-crawl, half-run behind a car for cover. 

Hiding and listening to the sounds around her, a flurry of emotions stirred through her; fear, confusion, desperation, and oddly, curiosity. But overriding all of that was the need to survive. But what was she needing to survive for? She was safe, none of this was real. All she needed to do was focus, focus, just fucking  _ focus _ on the present. This was just a bad memory coming up for reasons G-d only knew. 

Something shifted in the air, the humidity of New York in the summer was swapped for cool air blowing against her face. The sounds around her shifted again and, silence filling her head, the craggy asphalt under her legs turned to shaggy carpet. Marlena whipped her head around the side of the car, but just as quickly as she’d done so, the entire scene changed. She was inside an apartment, but it wasn’t one that Marlena recognized. 

Panic seized her, and she got up on shaky legs, turning uselessly in a circle trying to find an exit. “Hill?” Marlena called out, “Anybody?” 

She did another turn and her breath hitched in her chest when she came face to face with her mom. 

Marlena tried to call out to her, but her voice was useless against the hot bulb of emotion building in her throat. Was this a memory too? Her mom looked just the way she had the last time she’d seen her; the same tired expression like she had just gotten off work, hair pulled back into a puff, the same sweater faded blue hoodie that she wore around the house when she wanted to get comfortable. But there was something different about this image of her mother. It felt current, it felt alive. 

“Mom?” Marlena finally managed to choke out. 

Her mom looked at her with shock in her eyes, and racking her mind as hard as she could, Marlena couldn’t place a finger on what scenario she was remembering. Had she gotten in trouble for something at school? Couldn’t be, because now, her mom was crying. But she didn’t say anything. Marlena tried to call out for her again, but her mom closed the space between them, put her hands on her face, and said, “I’ll find you.” 

She was sent flying backward, back to the present, back to the cold tiles of the grocery store, and landed on her back, smacking her head against the floor. Had she seriously been falling? 

Marlena looked up and saw there was a crowd of customers standing around her, and Hill kneeling beside her, holding onto her hand. 

“Where am I?” Marlena asked, the question feeling stupid as the words left her mouth. 

“Marley,” Hill started, but Marlena persisted. 

“I saw my mom.” 

“Marley, c’mon,” Hill tugged gently on her hand, urging her to stand. 

“But I  _ saw _ her. She was right there! She was right there and I left her!” She was crying now. “I left her.” 


	4. Chapter 4

This was Marlena’s first time out of her room since leaving for the grocery store. She cursed as she stumbled down the hall and fumbled with the doorknob to the bathroom, she covered her mouth with her hands, but it was useless. One heaving cough later, and she was vomiting into the sink. Marlena hadn't eaten anything since she got back from the mall, so she was mostly just throwing up bile, which did nothing to ease her pain.

The hours since her breakdown at the grocery store had ticked by slowly, despite the fact that she had finally managed to fall asleep. When she woke up her room was still bright with early afternoon sunlight, and there was a tray with a bowl of soup with a sandwich on her nightstand. She had started to eat, but when she reached over to the nightstand for the glass of water, she noticed a small blue pill on the napkin next to it. Her mouthful of food suddenly felt too dry to swallow and she spit it out into the napkin that the pill was in, bundled it up on the tray and rolled over to go to sleep.

Sleep didn’t come. She was wondering if she would ever be able to close her eyes again without a nightmare or suppressed memory of New York burning its way to the forefront of her mind. 

Hill knocked on the door later in the evening, coming in with more food. Marlena sat up so she could at least try to eat again, but noticed that Hill had brought the pill bottle with her. She furrowed her eyebrows and flopped back onto her pillows. 

“Marlena,” Hill started.

“I'm not taking them.” Marlena said, pulling the covers over her head. Hill sighed and left the room, the rattle of the pill bottle trailing behind her as she left. 

In a health class two years ago, her teacher had gone over the five stages of grief with her class; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When she’d first read about them in the lesson, she thought back to when life without her father had begun, trying to dig up any memories of how and when she had gone through all five stages. 

Marlena wasn’t even sure she was in any of the five stages. They all seemed to have tied a knot in her chest, the ends of each thread dangling loose, and at random, one of them would pull too hard and trigger a memory, an emotion, and usually physical reaction. 

After waking up from a short-lived nap, Marlena had actually gotten onto her knees and prayed, something she hadn't done, well, ever now that she thought about it. Growing up, her mother hadn't been religious. Holidays were treated as bonus days off and Sundays were just an extra day for chores or cheap matinee movies. Marlena would never have described herself as an atheist, especially not after the attack. If aliens existed, who was to say some almighty deity that created every living creature didn't either? 

She had gotten on her knees at the foot of her bed, the way she'd seen in books and TV shows over the years. She didn't know who to pray to, or what to pray for, but decided that going straight to G-d and asking to take the pain away was a good enough start. When she was finished, she had felt a tad bit pathetic about it. It hadn't felt like a genuine prayer, and she sure as hell wasn't too eager to do that again, but she had bargained to be devout if G-d, if they were even really there, would just do something about everything she had been going through. Marlena figured that that had to be some kind of bargaining. 

There wasn’t a moment that she felt in denial about her mother’s death. Being uprooted and having a traumatic flashback made it pretty clear that all of this was real. The anger was perpetual, she was constantly spitting at the image of Fury in her head for not doing something earlier in her life. The least he could have done was help out with money, mom's stubborn attitude about it or not. But she was mad at her mom too. How stubborn and ignorant could she have been to deny Fury access to them and deny Marlena information on her father? If her mother had gotten over whatever dumb rationalization she had about their situation sooner, then maybe she would still be alive. New York would still be blown to hell, and they probably would have been poorer than they’d ever been before, but she would have been alive, and they’d be together. They both could've been in this apartment instead of her and Hill. 

Depression was a swinging pendulum. She figured her behavior the last couple of days was a symptom of that, but she couldn’t remember a time when the invisible cloud of her father’s death wasn’t constantly hanging over her, even if she didn’t know that that’s what was causing it.

On a lazy day in sixth grade, her teacher had made her class do ice breakers again, despite the fact that it was the end of the year and already knew each other well enough. When her teacher got to her, Marlena pulled a piece of paper from the bowl with ice breaker questions asking what traits she got from her mother, and which she got from her father. Back then, she had been overwhelmed with a feeling of melancholia, tears instantly streaming from her eyes as she pressed against her memory, trying to think of anything that she could about her father, but couldn’t. Back then, she blamed it on her meds not working, but now it was clear that it was some part of her psyche reaching forward, trying to tell her that she had a right to be upset over her father's death, no matter how much her mother tried to repress it. 

Acceptance felt like a world away. Everything was still so fresh. It felt more like a goal to work towards than something that would happen on its own. Part of her felt like asking Hill how long it had taken her to accept a death, she figured that he had to have had team members or even family members killed in their line of work. She decided against it, for now anyway, not wanting to bring up his own traumatic memories while trying to ensure that she wasn’t swallowed alive by hers. Another part of her thought asking Fury would help, but that was completely out of the question. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing her. He had opted out of that when he dumped her onto Hill without so much as a proper goodbye.

But at the same time, she knew he was the only other person within close enough proximity to her life to know the pain she was going through. Sure, her mother had cut Fury out of her life, but Fury had lost his son, daughter in law, and almost his granddaughter. He came off as stoic, but it had to be eating him alive knowing that he could have done something sooner, and didn’t. The thought of talking to Fury again made Marlena’s stomach twist from nerves, but she knew that was her best option of getting some sort of advice for dealing with this. 

Thinking of Fury made her think of those first confusing hours after waking up on the helicarrier. It made her think of seeing her mom. 

_ I’ll find you. _

That dizzying confusion that she’d felt at the grocery store came flooding back all at once. Her mom was dead, but she wasn’t. But she was, but that image had been so clean, so clear, so  _ current. _ That split second of confusion sent a wave of vertigo through Marlena, before settling in her stomach and making her gag. She raced out of the room, swearing as she pummeled into the bathroom, covering her mouth with her hands to stop her vomit from getting across the floor and toilet lid. She went for the sink instead, coughing and hacking until she was dry heaving. The convulsions made her stomach cramp, and she groaned as the stitches in her stomach were tugged with the stress.

She heard the TV in the living room, and Hill’s footsteps trailed after her toward the bathroom, but she slammed the door shut before she could properly check in on her.

Anger again? Maybe, she hoped not. It was late now and she was already starting to feel like a burden to her. The last thing she wanted right now was to have Hill clean up her bile off the floor at one in the morning. She grabbed her bath towel, ran it under cold water in the tub, and started wiping up the mess. It was sloppy, and the smell still lingered, but she figured that she could deal with that in the morning. 

She left the bathroom, met with Hill still standing in the doorframe. She didn’t say anything, probably tired of repeating ‘are you okay?’ and ‘what’s wrong?’ to her since this morning, so Marlena did the talking for her.

“I wanna talk to Fury.” 

* * *

Sometime in the night, Marlena had fallen asleep on the couch. Hill had given her a glass of ginger ale and a pill that she swore was just to help her sleep and not the SSRIs from her bathroom. She went and got the bottle to prove it to her after she drank half the ginger ale but left the pill untouched in the napkin. When sleep didn’t come after half an hour of watching late night infomercial runs, she took the pill, and was asleep within twenty minutes, not having any dreams this time, which she was so thankful for. When she woke up, there was a mug of tea on the coffee table, and she had a blanket thrown over her.

She heard the faucet running in the kitchen, and lifted her head, expecting to see Hill making breakfast, but instead saw the back of Fury’s head and dressed a lot more casually in a polo shirt and jeans. 

His sudden appearance in the apartment was jarring. When she had asked to speak to him, she thought that it would have been another couple of days at most, or that she would have gotten a phone call. Seeing him again, especially in jeans, felt, well it felt a little weird. Given the circumstances that they had first met, this felt entirely out of place. 

Fury turned in the kitchen to grab something out of a cabinet, and his eyes caught Marlena’s. “Morning.” he said, “Well, afternoon.” he said.

Marlena nodded and adjusted herself so she was sitting upright. “What time is it?” she asked. 

“Only a little after twelve. I didn’t want to wake you up, Hill said you had a rough night.” Fury walked out of the kitchen and sat on the edge of the couch furthest away from her. “So, what made you give me a call?” 

This was the part she hadn’t planned out. It wasn’t like she had had any real time to run this scenario through her head. But this wasn’t anything she could have prepared herself for. It wasn’t a test or asking permission to go somewhere, she needed someone who could relate to her grief, and Fury was the only person alive who knew an ounce of the pain she was going through. A situation like this benefited from nothing but all the raw emotions that had been tearing through Marlena the past few days. Getting them out to Fury now would probably help keep them at bay for a while. 

“How do you do it?” she started slowly, keeping her eyes away from him. “How-how do you deal with the aftermath of losing someone close to you?” She kept her eyes on her hands in her lap as she talked, not wanting to see whatever flash of emotion would go across Fury’s face. 

She heard him sigh before saying, “First time’s always the hardest, I can tell you that.” he said. 

“Who was your first time?” 

“Your grandmother. Cancer got her just after your dad graduated high school.” 

“No, I mean. When people die like mom did?” she said. She opened her mouth to continue, but knew what she was going to say would come off rudely. “I mean, cancer sucks, but you can like, mentally prepare for the end. You know it’s coming.” She looked at Fury from the corner of her eye. “How do you deal with losing someone at work.” she tried again. She peeled her eyes away from her hands and made herself look at his profile. 

He wasn’t looking at her. “Your dad was my first.” he started, “I mean, you lose people in the Marines, but like you said, you can kinda prepare for that, walking into the line of fire n'all. But James, he was,” Fury paused and took a breath. “He was my pride and joy, all that gushy Hallmark card stuff. I wanted to die after I heard he had been killed.” he let out a sigh. “And then to have you and your mother disappear right after,” he paused and shook his head. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. Felt like the world was falling out from under my feet and all I could do was watch.” 

Marlena was quiet for a while. Had he ever told this to anyone before? “How often do you think about him?” 

“Every day.” 

Silence again. 

It should have been an obvious answer to her, but she was still scrambling for what to say next. Who wouldn’t think about their dead child every day, a murdered one no less. Marlena wondered if the tables had been switched, if she had died instead of her mother, would she be having this conversation with Fury instead? Would her mother have kept going in her life of solitude, still silently blaming Fury for the death of her husband, and now her only child? When Marlena remembered her prayer from yesterday, she wondered if her mom was in the afterlife, worrying sick about when Marlena was going to be reunited with her. A morbid thought, but it also made her think of her parents reunited, now only waiting for Marlena to join them. Would they want her now or later? Would they want Fury when he eventually died? Hopefully he would die. She didn’t want to go three for three on family members killed in tragic events.

“I didn’t think about dad every day.” she said at last. “I couldn’t.” It sounded harsh and selfish, but it was the truth. When she started middle school, and kids were learning how to really hit where it hurts, the relentless bullying about her father’s absence became too much. There was already a lack of memories of him, but hearing kids at school tell her that he had walked out on her because her mom was a slut, or because he didn’t love her and her mother made her hate the few ideas she had created of him in her mind. And with her mother’s reluctance to share any information about him, well, it wasn’t like Marlena had anything to really hold onto of him to think fondly on. 

“It wasn’t practical for me. I mean, mom probably thought about him enough for the both of us. And I guess you did too.” Marlena said.

“Practicality and grief don’t go hand in hand.” Fury said. 

“I chose what I needed to get through what was in front of me. Dad wasn’t it, so I chose practical.”

“Yeah well, if it weren’t for me, you never would have had to make that choice.” The guilt in his voice was heavy, and when Marlena processed what he had said, she almost got mad. But as she looked at him, she knew there was no point in her anger.

He had lost his son, and was looking at a life that had felt the brunt force of his absence the most. This wasn’t a man who had come here to be berated by her anger, no matter how much she felt that he deserved it. This was someone who could understand her, someone who had come close to understanding a fraction of the pain that he had been carrying for over a decade.

Was it a relief for him? As much as this had to have hurt, was he at least glad that there was someone who shared the pain? Marlena remembered a phrase she had read once in a book a few years ago; Who embalms the undertaker when he dies?

Who saves the heroes when the job’s all done?

Fury rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand and cleared his throat. “I got something for you.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small black box and passed it to Marlena. 

She took it slowly and opened the lid to reveal a small oval-shaped    
locket on a thin gold chain. 

“I know it’s not much, but I figured it’s the least I could do.” he said.

Marlena carefully lifted the necklace out of the box, caressing the locket in the palm of her hand. She carefully opened the locket and let out a sad sigh when she saw a picture of her mom, years younger, exhausted, but smiling in a hospital bed holding a newborn Marlena in her arms. Next to her in the bed was a young man with short cropped hair and a mile wide grin on his face. He had one arm wrapped around her mom, and another underneath Marlena, helping her mom hold her up.

“Dad.” she said

“I have the full picture at my place if you want that instead.” Fury said. 

Marlena shook her head. “No, no, this is perfect, thank you.” She rubbed her thumb across the small glossy photo and smiled softly.

She had grown up without any pictures of her parents together, and now she had one of the three of them together, unknowingly starting down the trek of what would pull them apart. But that didn’t matter to her now. She was happy enough with what she had.

“Marlena,” Fury said quietly, breaking her thought. She looked up from the locket and met his sad gaze. “I’m sorry you had to make that choice.” he said.

She rubbed at the picture with her thumb, looked down at it again, and didn’t meet his gaze again as she said, “Just make sure neither one of us have to make it again.”

* * *

Two days later, Fury was back at the apartment. Hill told Marlena to get dressed and explained that Fury wanted to take her out. She did as instructed, and went into the living room to find Fury standing by the door. 

“Where are we going?” she asked as she followed him down the stairs. 

“You’ll see.” was all he said. 

“You’re not taking me to some other estranged family member that wants to meet me, are you?” 

“No, it’s nothing that exciting.”

They didn’t say anything to each other during the ride, Fury didn’t even turn on the radio. She tried once to say something, maybe thank him again for the necklace, but just huffed her words into a sigh and kept staring out the window. When they drove through the gates of a cemetery, Marlena’s stomach sank. 

“What’re we doing here?” she asked. 

Fury didn’t say anything. He parked the car, got out, and led Marlena down the path winding between the graves, until they reached a plot in the center with two white marble headstones. There was no explanation needed anymore. 

Her eyes fell to her father’s grave first. It wasn’t anything that Marlena had actively thought about when she was younger, but seeing it now made her realize that she had never even known where her father had been buried when he died. 

_ James L. Fury  _

_ May 15 1971 - May 1 1999 _

_ I Love You In A Place _

_ Where There Is No Space Or Time _

_ I Love You For My Life  _

_ ‘Cause You’re A Friend Of Mine  _

  
  


Reading the date on the headstone made the sadness in Marlena sink even further into her stomach, but also bubble up into her chest until she let out a choked cry. May fifteenth, today was her father’s birthday.

“This is a real  _ Leaves From The Vine _ moment,” Marlena said, wiping tears from her face. 

“What?” Fury asked. 

She shook her head and let out a short laugh. “Nothing, dumb tv joke.” 

They stood there in silence for a few moments, before Fury started lowering himself onto the grass. Marlena followed suit and they both sat, not saying a word, staring dead ahead at her parent’s graves. 

“Mom used to play that song around the house,” Marlena said after a few moments. 

The line was from  _ A Song For You _ by Donny Hathaway. ‘Used to’ was an understatement. The last time Marlena had heard her mother play the song was when she was six years old. They had just moved into a new apartment, and Marlena had woken up to the sound of the song drifting into the bedroom that she and her mom were sharing at the time. She had crept out into the hallway and looked into the living room to find her mother's eyes closed, swaying side to side in a slow circle, arms stretched aloft, holding onto an invisible partner. 

Marlena sat crouched in the doorway of the living room for the entire song, when it stopped and her mother turned her back to the CD player to turn it off, she quietly made her way back to the bedroom. That same night was the first time she could remember hearing her mother cry. Soft, concealed whimpers floated into the bedroom, Marlena had wanted to go out and sit on her lap and hug her, tell her that it was going to be okay, but she hadn’t. Thinking back on the memory now, Marlena realized that it had been a few weeks after she had turned six, meaning that it was a year after her father had died. It was no wonder she'd heard her mother crying. 

That was the last time she had heard her mother play that song. But somehow, all these years later, she knew it the instant she saw the lyrics.

“It was one of his favorites,” Fury said, “Well, his and your grandmother’s favorites. They shared a lot in common.” 

Marlena nodded. “What exactly happened to dad?” she asked. She looked over to Fury expectantly. “You never told me.” 

Fury let out a heavy sigh. “I’m not going to lie and say that I wanted to tell you, because I really didn’t. It was bad enough to live through it. Wasn’t really something I wanted to have to explain to you after telling you Sarah was dead.” 

Marlena nodded slowly. “I understand.” she meant it. 

She had already seen Fury pouring his heart out the other day just thinking about James without bringing up how he had actually died. The pain was the only thing they had in common, but she only had a fraction of it, there was no way for her to know just how much it must have hurt to have been carrying that weight for thirteen years, especially if Fury had a hand in his only child’s death. 

That realization about Fury made her feel so incredibly sad for him, it also made her realize that she had more in common with him than just a name. 

She looked at her mother’s headstone, smooth and clean compared to the weathered and aged look of her father’s. 

_ Sarah Y. Grant-Fury  _

_ November 19 1971 - May 5, 2012 _

_ God Couldn’t Be Everywhere _

_ So He Created Mothers _

“What about mom?” Marlena asked. “How did she even get caught up in all of this? I always thought she was just this lady from North Carolina with no family and sad life and then you come along and tell me all of that was a lie.” 

“It wasn’t all a lie.” Fury said.

“So all of this is just some huge misunderstanding then?” 

Fury didn’t say anything.

It was clear that he was referencing the fact that Sarah hadn’t been lying about her life prior to, well to everything, even if Marlena hadn’t known that much about it. But if it had been some huge misunderstanding? If Sarah Grant had really just been a regular woman roped into something so much bigger than herself when she married into the Fury family? That would have been a much harder pill to swallow than the truth. 

“She caught our attention, well, Shield’s attention, when she was only a few years older than you actually,” Fury started, “She was about as big a prodigy as Stark was actually,”

“As in  _ Iron Man _ Stark?” Marlena asked.

“Got half the attention though, don’t think I have to explain why.” 

“Twice the talent and half the reward.” Marlena mumbled.

Fury nodded and continued, “She got to NC State, ran circles around her professors, and Shield offered her a position in their science division, and she took it, graduated early, left for two years to get her masters, graduated early  _ again _ and came back to work for us with about a dozen projects that needed funding at the end of ‘92. 

Her and your dad met when he was working security at a lab she was stationed at in New Mexico, kept transferring with her whenever she got transferred, and then the rest is history.” 

“There’s still a lotta gaps in that history.” Marlena said. 

“Such as?” 

“What kind of projects was mom working on?” 

“Gonna be honest and tell you that I’m not entirely sure. I was still just a handler when your mom came to Shield, so I was riding desk duty for the most part. Nothing about your mom’s work ever made it down to my division, even after she and your father got together, he wasn’t even entirely sure what it was that she was doing. And after things went south, it was all archived or destroyed.” 

“Just like that?” 

“Just like that.” 

Sarah had been a lot of things, and persistent was one of them. If she wanted something done, even if it was just getting the chores done in a timely manner, then G-d dammit, she was going to get it done. That attitude had been shoved onto Marlena for as long as she could remember. There was no such thing as a shortcut or early night in the Grant household. It didn’t seem likely that her mom would have abandoned years of work in an instant, even if it was for the safety of her family. There had to have been something that she’d kept around….

The notebook. 

For a brief moment, Marlena thought to ask Fury if he knew anything about it, but pushed the thought aside. Even if he did, she wasn’t too keen on having him overstay his welcome at the apartment. This visit had been nice, but that’s all it was, nice. An extended kindness that felt like a necessary step in the healing process. 

Would finding out about what her mother did at Shield even do anything to keep her moving forward, or keep pushing her back? There was only one way to find out. 

They left the graveyard a few minutes later, and Fury returned her to the apartment, telling her that she’d see her around. She went to her room, closed the door behind her, and went to the closet, grabbed the notebook, and sat down on the floor. 

The marble cover was unremarkable, the same as any old composition notebook that Marlena had used for years and years of homework. But with the hope of finding out about her mother’s past, the thought of knowing something that Fury didn’t, well, it was a little exciting, despite all the conflicting emotions it was sure to conjure. Her excitement was quickly replaced with confusion when she turned to the first page and was met with a page of nonsense. 

_ 00/08/13 Europa changed its position in the sky, but an eclipse cut the day short.  _

_ 00/12/12 Ares reached across the night. Very underwhelming to be honest.  _

_ 01/03/09 Very cloudy today. Poor weather for stargazing. _

She flipped through a few more pages, and found that they were all filled with short entries talking of stars, planets, retrogrades, and nothing at all that screamed ‘top secret Shield project’. In a fit of disappointment, she chucked the notebook back into the closet, where it thudded against the back wall. She threw herself onto her back and stared at the ceiling. 

That couldn’t have been all her mother had left of her Shield days? A notebook filled with weird astrology poems? It felt like an insult that all the genius that her mother supposedly was whittled down to a short funeral and even shorter journal entries. There had to be more, but for the time being, Marlena was too annoyed and too run down to do anything more than pull herself into bed, pull her knees to her chest, and dream of the stars that her mom had written about, hoping that some clarity would come. 


	5. Chapter 5

_ September 2012 _

Sitting in the passenger seat, backpack propped between her knees, in the hoodie and shorts combo that she was hoping wouldn’t get her a dress code violation on her first day of school, Marlena felt ridiculously childish. If this had been any other day, she would have been looking lazily out the window, watching the gaggle of elementary school kids shouting and crying, not wanting to leave their parents, or playing Angry Birds on her phone. But today, she was slumped down in her seat, trying to make herself look as miserable as possible.

“I still don’t see why I couldn’t just be homeschooled.” she grumbled. 

“You have no reason to be homeschooled. You’ll be fine.” Hill said.

“Yeah, if by ‘fine’ you mean waiting for a panic attack, then yeah. I’ll be  _ perfect _ .” 

“You don’t need to be homeschooled,” Hill repeated more sternly. “Besides, if you were, you’d probably just be complaining about wanting to go to a regular school. You’d be bored being around the house without kids your age.”

“Fair, but did it have to be a private school? Was public school not good enough for me all of a sudden?” Marlena groaned.

“Yes, actually,” she said in a matter-of-fact way. “None of the public schools around here come close to where your marks on your transcript and placement tests were. You’d just be bored going over watered down material you already know.” 

“I could just go to public school and get an easy ticket to valedictorian.” 

“That’d be cheating.” Hill said. “Listen, it’s not gonna be that bad. At least you don’t have to wear a uniform.” 

“Oh for the love of,” Marlena put her hands on her face and grumbled a line of swears. 

For all of August, she and Hill had been going back and forth about what school she would be going to for her senior year. Marlena didn’t have as much agency in the conversation as she would have liked to have though, because one day over dinner, Hill told her that she would be attending Potomac Academy of Advanced Academics. She couldn’t have given two shits about what her grades were, she would excel wherever she went. She just knew that she wasn’t ready for school after an entire summer of being indoors and completely isolated from her peers. Especially now after a thorough diagnosis of PTSD and anxiety, coupled with a Prozac medication that mellowed her out like she’d taken half a pack of Benadryl. 

After the visit to her parents’ graves, Fury went back to Shield, and Marlena hadn’t seen him since. She and Hill grew a bit more comfortable around each other, Hill even started teaching Marlena German after her school schedule came in the mail and noted that that would be her foreign language credit. 

The last couple of weeks had coasted by in a haze consisting mostly of shopping for clothes, finally getting a new phone, and going back and forth to the academy for placement testing. Technically, she shouldn’t have had to take placement exams at all, but her cover of a new-to-town kid from Oregon wouldn’t exactly fly if she had school records placing her in Manhattan just four months prior.

“I knew I should've graduated early.” Marlena fussed. “I could be in college in San Francisco or Houston right now. Far from here.” She rested her chin in her hand and looked lazily out the window as the car crept through the morning traffic. 

As they got closer to the building that Marlena had come to recognize all too well in her days of placement testing, the dread hit her all at once. The courtyard of the school was full of kids running from their parents' cars to friends they hadn't seen since the start of the summer. Even the younger looking freshmen were hanging around in groups. Marlena groaned when Hill pulled into the carpool line. 

“Oh come on Marlanea, the day will be done before you know it.” she said reassuringly.

“Easy for you to say.” she grumbled.

“Okay. There's only so much teenage brooding I can take in one morning.” Hill said. She hit the unlock button and reached over to open Marlena's door. 

“Oh my G-d.” Marlena sighed. 

“Brighten up Marley, seriously. You’ll be fine.” Hill gave her a reassuring smile.

Marlenajust rolled her eyes, grabbed her bookbag, and stepped out of the car. “I'm not calling you mom.” She said closing the door behind her. 

“Have a great day!” Hill called as Marlena walked away.

Marlena didn’t say anything else, just gave a half-hearted wave and focused on weaving through the crowd of kids in front of her. 

She went past all the cliques of students and straight up the stairs to the doors of the school. Inside the entrance hall, things were a bit less crowded. Potomac Academy wasn't a big school, only about 500 students total, but seeing the throngs of unfamiliar kids out front plus the few that had already started their way inside to find classes made Marlena think of the bustling tourist streets of Time Square. 

She took the class schedule that had come in the mail out of the pocket of her hoodie. Despite the fact that she had been coming back and forth to the school for testing, she had only been in one classroom next to the principal's office. 

  
  


_ Homeroom/APUSH 8:15 to 9:15 - Ms. Cooper Rm 217 _

_ AP Physics 9:18 to 10:30 - Mr. Dillard Rm 134 _

_ German 10:33 to 11:45 - Mr. Brandt Rm 202 _

_ Lunch 11:48 to 12:18 _

_ Old World Literature 12:21 to 1:35- Ms. Douglas Rm 116 _

_ Study Hall 1:38 to 3:15 - Library (check with homeroom teacher each morning as the location for your assigned study hall group may change) _

She had lucked out in her placement testing when she met the maximum scores for math and science. But also cursed herself because instead of having an individual class on each subject, she had to take the highest level of physics the school offered. Everything else was pretty much in line with the classes she had been taking back in New York. 

There wasn’t anything in particular that she was looking forward to getting out of her classes. The German class seemed intriguing though. Marlena had only ever taken Spanish throughout her school years and was glad that she could at least practice something that 

She found one of the staircases at the far end of the first floor and went about locating room 217. The second floor was empty, save for the one teacher walking into their classroom on the other end. She walked down the hall, eyes darting from wall to wall looking for the right class number. When she found the right room, the door was already open. She poked her head inside and saw a short middle age white lady placing paper packets onto the desks. Marlena stepped into the doorframe and announced herself. 

“Is this Ms. Cooper’s class?” she asked. 

The woman jolted a bit at her voice but nodded her head when she looked up and saw Marlena. “Yes. Hi, you must be the new girl. Mary, right?” Ms. Cooper put down her papers and walked briskly to the door with a smile and her hand stretched out to her. 

“Uh, no. It’s Marley.” Marlena said, shaking Ms. Cooper’s hand.

She didn’t understand the purpose of creating an entirely different life story for her if she was just going to go by the shortened version of her name, but Hill had told her that Marley Gabrielle Ryan was already printed onto all of her “legal” documents. 

“Y’know, I always thought I was gonna get a fake id to like, buy drinks in my freshman year of college,” Marlena had said as she turned over her new, shiny DC issued driver’s license, “not for like, Superhero Witness Protection.”

Ms. Cooper's smile didn’t flex an inch on her face as she corrected herself. “Oh, my mistake. Marley, it is then. You’re a little early, but that’s okay. It’s your first day, I’m sure you must feel a little anxious, but I don’t bite, so if you have any problems with anyone in this class, or any others, you just come talk to me about it okay?” 

Ms. Cooper was giving Marlena the impression of a woman whose attitude was far better suited for a younger,  _ much _ younger audience, but had somehow gotten saddled with teaching uber-smart teenagers instead. 

Marlena nodded. “Will do.” 

Ms. Cooper smiled sweetly. “Now you do have an assigned seat, and I think your’s should be,” she stepped back and wandered around the rows of desks for a moment, “right, over, ah ha! Here.” she pointed to a desk in the middle of the third row of desks. Great. Alphabetical order. 

Marlena went to her seat and picked up the syllabus that Ms. Cooper had put on her desk. She flipped through it until the bell rang and students started to pool into the classroom. Just as she had seen outside, everybody seemed to know everybody already. Despite the assigned seating, students were grouping up at the desks of whichever friend they found first and chatting away. Marlena was in the center of it all, her solitude shining like a beacon in the middle of an ocean. She tried to make herself disappear into the crowd, sinking down into her chair, keeping her eyes on her hands. But then, she heard Ms. Cooper call for everyone to take their seats, and the classroom bustled for a few seconds more before settling into order. 

Ms. Cooper went through the standard new year speech, saying hello to students she recognized from the year before, telling everyone how fortunate they were to have made it this far in such a prestigious school, and so on. Marlena thought she had almost made it scotch free of any possible ice breakers that Ms. Cooper might have prepared, but just as she was letting her cover down, she heard her teacher say, “Now, that we’re all situated, I’d like to introduce our new student!” 

Oh G-d. Marlena thought to herself, but a low, frustrated groan still escaped her, and she couldn’t keep herself from sliding down in her seat as she was suddenly in the center of the class’ attention

“Class, give a warm welcome to Marley Ryan.” Ms. Cooper smiled. 

A few of the students in front of her turned around, one of them waved. Marlena gave a weak smile and an even weaker wave. “Hi.” she said plainly.

“So, is there anything you want to tell us about yourself?” Ms. Cooper continued. 

“Uh, not really.” Marlena answered. 

“Oh come on, you’re new in town? Where’d you move from?” 

Marlena was fighting the urge to roll her eyes. “Eugene, Oregon.” 

“Why’d you move?” one student spoke up from behind her. 

She turned around and saw a white boy with black hair and freckles across his face looking at her kindly. Her cover story was that she and Hill, well, Helen Ryan was her cover name, had moved to DC from Eugene after a death in the family. When she had asked Hill who she was supposed to say had died, she had told her, “Doesn’t matter. It’s not like anyone’s going to be asking much after the first day.” 

All that really needed to line up with her cover was that Hill was her godmother that she’d been sent to live with after the untimely death of some relative that she had been living with prior. It was simple and a little too close to Marlanea’s reality, and she knew that that was on purpose. Better to play it safe and keep it close to real life than have her fumble through something more complicated and blow her cover to whoever the hell it was she needed to be protected from.

“My grandfather died,” Marlena settled. “I’m living with my godmother now. She’s my only family left.” 

“My goodness, I’m sorry for your loss.” Ms. Cooper said.

“It’s fine. Seriously.” Marlena said. 

“Well if you ever need anyone to speak to, I’m sure your classmates will be more than willing to listen.” 

Marlena nodded her head and didn’t respond. Ms. Cooper gave her one last smile before returning her attention to the entire class again. Marlena glanced up at the clock, there was still another fifty minutes left in class. “Gross.” she whispered. 

“Oh, and before I forget,” Ms. Cooper said pointedly. “Marley?”

“Yes?” Marlena answered, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Couldn’t this lady just leave her alone already? 

“Those shorts you’re wearing are too short. I’m not gonna write you up today but just a little note for the future. Okay?” Ms. Cooper finished, still smiling the entire time. 

Marlena gave a thumbs up and nodded, received a satisfied smile (jeez this lady’s dental work must have been expensive as hell for as much she was flexing those teeth), and Ms. Cooper finally, finally left her alone for the remainder of class. 

* * *

After the first two weeks were over, Marlena came to the conclusion that she was going to have a less than exciting senior year. When the first week ended and she returned to class the next Monday, everyone had gotten over the excitement of having a new student at the school. By the end of the second week, none of her classmates had spoken much to her other than an occasional “Good morning”, “Excuse me”, and “Can I borrow a pen?”, no one had gone out of their way to speak to her and Marlena was fine to have it that way.

It was useless to assume that she'd have any sort of excitement in her final year outside of keeping her anxiety attacks under control. It wasn't as if she could tell any of her classmates about herself, as Hill had given strict instructions to keep up her cover and not mention she was from New York or a survivor of the attacks. It was one part to protect the obvious truth about herself, and also to prevent any prying students to upset Marlena should they decide to interrogate her about the events of New York. So, Marlena chose quiet solitude, coincidentally at the back of all her classes, as her cover surname started with the letter R. But she was fine to keep it that way. All she wanted to do was make the best grades that she could, get a 1500 on the SAT, and apply to a school far, far,  _ far  _ away from DC. 

But despite her decision to fly as far under the radar as possible, Marlena still yearned for some semblance of the comfort and normalcy that she had back in New York. The only real time she felt comfortable now was when she stepped back into the apartment and at least didn't have to pretend to be someone that she wasn't. But the comforts of the apartment were strained by the artificialness of it all. Even there, she had to remember that Hill was a legal and physical guardian to her, but a single mother to all of the neighbors and the landlord. Everywhere she went, she had to be Marley Lynn Ryan, and would probably have to continue to be her long after graduation and eighteenth birthday. 

She longed for the ability to just walk down the halls at school and at least recognize the faces that she was seeing from years of being in classes together from kindergarten to eleventh grade. In New York, she hadn't been the most popular girl and was still relatively shy, but people knew who she was. There were a few of her classmates who were on friendly enough terms with her to even invite her out a few times to the movies. There was even one time when her mother allowed her to go to a football game with a boy from her math class in tenth grade, and although the night had ended on a sour note when she told him that she didn't feel the same about him that he did about her (or any boy for that matter), it was still something that Marlena longed to be able to do now. 

It felt unfair that despite all the whoop and holler about her life somehow being in danger all these years, she grew up relatively normal. The fact that the effects of her dangerous life were coming to uproot her now after she had just gotten comfortable hurt like a bitch. 

The only real comfort that came from school was study hall. Technically, it was another class, but after the first day of class, she quickly learned that that was just where juniors with too many credits to need another class, and seniors too smart for their own good, were herded into the library and adjacent computer labs at for the end of the day so they wouldn’t run amuck in the halls. After sitting in the library for about fifteen minutes, Marlena got the gist of what exactly was going on, got up, and left. She didn’t have a plan, so she just wandered around the halls aimlessly. There were few teachers or students milling about as it was the end of the day, which made Marlena’s eventual routine for last period all that more easy. 

On the first day, she had given up wandering and went to wait in the staircase closest to the front entrance so she could be the first out the door when the bell rang. But on the second day, she took a wrong turn coming out of the library and ended up in an unmarked stairwell mistaking it for the one that would take her back downstairs. At first she assumed that it was some third floor that she hadn’t been to, all of her classes were split between the first and second levels of the school. She decided to see where it went, but quickly realized her ideas of a secret level were false when she saw how worn the steps were and coughed on the stuffy air when the door swung shut behind her.

When she reached the top and emerged on the roof, she panicked for a moment, thinking some alarm must have been going off to alert the staff below that someone was up there. But none did. How had this not been marked off? Had no other student found this or did the school trust its students enough to not dick around on the rooftop? Marlena looked around, she had come out on the back end of the roof, away from the entrance at the front, so she was in no danger of being caught up here by anyone down below. Out on the backlot of the school was a small parking lot for the teachers and the few juniors and seniors that had cars. Down below, there were two students, one boy and one girl, their laughs casting soft echoes to the roof as they ran across the parking lot and to one of the cars. They wouldn’t pay her any attention if they saw her, and if they did, Marlena had seen them ditching just like she was. She walked back to the wall where the door was and sat down. It was a nice day, and there was a bit of shade, which made her lounging all the more enjoyable. For the rest of the first week, Marlena would go there after spending a few minutes in study hall, just to sign in, before ditching and going up to the roof. She never did anything worth talking about, and if she did it wasn’t as if she had anyone to talk to about it. She mostly just did homework, listened to music, and played games on her phone.

Those last forty-five minutes on the roof always felt like an eternity, but in the best way possible. It was the only place in her new life where she could actually carve time out for herself. No teachers forcing her to prove her worth, no students throwing odd glances over their shoulders trying to figure her out, and no Shield agents or grandfather checking in to make sure she wasn’t having another breakdown. 

She should’ve known it was all too good to last. 

It was the Wednesday of her third week of school, and she was in the middle of her German class. Her teacher, Mr. Brandt was giving them a bit of a break and letting the class chat amongst themselves and do homework for other classes, so long as they only spoke in German. Nobody listened of course, even after Mr. Brandt’s several threats to knock off class participation points if he heard more than two words of English. 

Marlena’s seat was towards the back of the class, because like most of her other classes, they were seated in alphabetical order. She took the opportunity to study a little for her upcoming physics test, and even asked Mr. Brandt if she could listen to music on her phone, and was surprised when he said yes (though she was even more surprised when he didn’t demand that she only listen to German music). So there she worked in silence with one earbud in so that she wouldn’t miss any calls to attention, and as far as days went for Marlena, this was shaping up to be a pretty good one. 

Halfway through class though, she had to go to the bathroom. She was trying to wait until the end of the period since she had lunch next, but nature had other ideas. Mr. Brandt gave her permission to go, and she just about ran down the hall to reach the bathroom at the furthest corner. 

She went into the last stall, the big one meant for wheelchairs. It was a habit she’d formed in her time at Yuell whenever she could, as most of the accessible stalls in the school also had sinks, making her bathroom breaks a lot less anxiety inducing. Just as she getting ready to leave, when the door opened, and a group of girls walked in

“-yeah that’s the one. She’s quiet.” the tail end of the first girl’s sentence drifted into Marlena’s stall.

A second girl started speaking. “Pff. Quiet’s not the word. She’s fuckin' weird. I swear, I’ve never heard her say anything in class unless Mr. Dillard’s calling role.” Marlena knew her voice, it belonged to, Bryce? Brianna? No, Brielle. She sat two seats over from her in physics. Marlena had caught her staring at her a few times in the last couple of weeks, and they were never stares of admiration or wonder. Brielle must have constantly smelled something bad whenever she stared at her, because when Marlena would catch her looking at her, she always had her nose twisted up as she cut her eyes at her.

“Is she mute or something? Deaf?” the first girl asked.

“No. Brielle’s right, she’s just fuckin' weird.” a third girl cut in, “She’s in my literature class, and I swear to G-d all she does is stare out the window.” Another familiar voice, Macy. She sat in front of her in Old World Literature. Marlena seldom saw anything of her other than the back of her shiny black hair. She actually kinda liked listening to Macy talk in class. She was constantly volunteering to read passages from whatever book it was they were studying right now. But apparently, Macy had something against her, all because she didn’t talk enough for her liking.

“Where is she from anyway? She just dropped outta thin air.” Brielle asked.

“Oregon I think? Nate’s in Ms. Cooper’s class with her. He says he catches her staring at me sometimes in lit.” Macy said.

Fuck. Marlena shut her eyes at that sentence. How the hell was she supposed to help the fact that Macy had the shiniest head of hair she had ever seen? Or an Audible Audiobooks quality voice? How could she not stare?

_ Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! _ Marlena mouthed silently.

“Oh Christ, I swear, if she’s anything like Reese I’m gonna barf.” Brielle laughed.

“Whatever. I told Nate that if he sees her staring again to just kick her ass or something. Shit’s weird. I’m just glad she’s not in my gym class, she’d probably get,” Macy’s sentence was cut off when Marlena flushed the toilet and came out of the stall. 

She had dealt with girls like them before. They never ceased to fill Marlena’s stomach with a flurry of emotions; rage, shame, fear, anger at herself for being like this in the first place. Back in New York, she had dealt with the girl in her chemistry class by cursing her out once for good measure in the middle of class. It landed her in Saturday detention for three weeks, but she had nothing to say to or about Marlena from that point on. Marcy, Brielle, and their short brunette friend were sure to be the same. Marlena had tried to keep a low profile for the year, but clearly, that wasn’t going to work. She should have known that rumors and jokes would have started circulating one way or another, but she thought they would have just been stupid things about why she never spoke, or what her real story was. It was a pain in the ass that the first thing they had jumped to was lesbianism.

If it had been anything, anything else, Marlena would have let it slide. But this was too personal for her to sit here and listen to it and not do anything. That, and she didn’t want to wait however long it would take for the three of them to be done, and G-d only knows what they would say about her then if she walked out after seemingly having eavesdropped on them for a couple of minutes in a bathroom.

“Oops,” Brielle said, though there was no hint of shame in her voice. 

Marlena washed her hands and stepped directly in front of Macy, nose almost touching hers and said, “You’re not even my type.” 

She didn’t give any of them a chance to say anything further, just stormed out of the bathroom, and down the hall in the opposite direction from Mr. Brandt’s class. Her brain was on autopilot and took her straight to the staircase that led up to the roof. Once she was there, she walked to the back ledge, inhaled, and screamed. It was short, and burned at the back of her throat, and she didn’t care who heard. 

All she had done was stay as far in her lane as humanly possible the last three weeks, and what had it gotten her? Rumors from some girls that she barely thought about and rumors about her sexuality spreading when she never said more than two words to anybody. It wasn’t fair, and Marlena should have guessed that there would be some other layer of bullshit to add to the pile growing on her plate, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. 

But despite all of that, the thing that hurt worst of all was that she couldn’t even complain about it to someone that really cared. Hill was only there out of obligation, and she wasn’t sure how far up high school bullies were on Fury’s list of importance. She figured that as long as they weren’t physically hurting her, then it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But if the rumors were enough to bring him about, Marlena wasn’t sure how comfortable she was talking about the things the girls had been saying to him anyway. 

Her head started throbbing, and her breath quickened in her chest. For a moment, she was afraid that she was having another panic attack, but it was cut short when she heard the door to the roof swing open and shut, promptly followed by a voice saying, “Oh shit,” She whipped around and was met with two students, one girl and one boy, standing and staring right at her. 

“You good?” the girl asked. 

The throbbing in her head stopped, and she stammered to answer the girl. “I-I’m fine.” 

The two students shared a look, before the boy shrugged, and said, “Okay Fine, I’m Theo. Don’t we have a class together?” There wasn’t any hostility in his question, but his curiosity was clearly trying to mask the concern he was pretending to shrug off. 

“What?” Marlena asked. Theo did look familiar, and after a few more seconds of studying his face, she realized that they did in fact have a class together, Mrs. Cooper’s first period. Great. All that she needed now was a pair of classmates going back to their friends and talking about the weird lesbian from Oregon practicing her banshee screech on the roof. 

“Yeah, you’re in Mrs. Cooper’s class with me,” Theo continued, “It’s Marley, right?” 

She nodded her answer. 

“Well, hey Marley, you’re not up here to like, jump or anything are you?” 

“ _ What?” _

The girl nudged Theo hard in his ribs. “Lay off man,” 

“What? I’m just tryna make sure she’s okay?” 

The girl rolled her eyes and said, “Ignore him. He just has trouble speaking to anyone other than me like a normal human. I’m Reese.” 

“Uh, I’m Marley,” she said, feeling rather stupid, as they clearly already knew who she was. 

Reese nodded. “Duly noted. But seriously, what’re you doing up here? People only come up here to smoke or cut class, and you clearly aren’t the type to do either of those things.” 

Again, there wasn’t anything harsh in the statement, it was just that, a simple observation, though Marlena wasn’t sure what exact vibes she would have to give off to fit either of the descriptors that Reese had given. 

“Nothing, I was just getting some air,” Marlena said, she started to leave, but stopped as she got closer to the door. There were only a few minutes left before the bell rang for lunch, going back now would mean that she’d have to face her classmates, who if they hadn’t already been aware of the rumors Brille, Macy, and their friends had been spreading, were surely going to have some inkling after it appeared that she was taken an insane amount of time to go to the bathroom. 

“Well most people coming up for air aren’t usually crying,” Reese pointed out. 

There weren’t any tears, but her nose was running as it was prepping up for the sobs that were sure to follow if she’d gone interrupted for a few moments more. 

“Oh but I need to lay off?” Theo said with a snicker. 

“I’m just gonna go,” Marlena said.

“Go back to class like that?” Reese asked, though she wasn’t waiting for an answer. She gave Marlena a quick once over and said, “People here are always looking for some bullshit to talk about, and no offense, you’re kinda the talk of the town right now.” 

_ Oh G-d.  _ Marlena turned the groan building in her throat to an annoyed sigh. So the bathroom incident wasn’t a stand-alone conversation, great. Just what she needed on top of this year from hell; classroom gossip. 

“I can handle it.” Marlena lied. 

Reese and Theo exchanged a skeptical glance before they both shrugged and Reese said, “Okay. See you later, best of luck.” 

“Uh, thanks.” 

Marlena opened the door to the stairwell and started down the first few steps before she stopped, just as the door was swinging shut behind her. Was there even any point in going back to class? It wasn’t like there was much time left in German anyway, but that’s not what she was concerned about. Next period was lunch. Even if she grabbed her things and came back up to the roof, rumors were sure to follow her quickly through the halls if she went back to class. 

Mr. Brandt wouldn’t mind if she overstayed her bathroom break, would he? It wasn’t like she caused trouble any other time, and it wasn’t like she wouldn’t be able to whip up a lie about cramps or a panic attack that would hopefully keep her out of detention. 

She looked back to the doorway, weighing her options. Go back to class, and try to endure the remainder of class and lunch alone and avoid her classmates. Or, go to the roof for the rest of class, and maybe talk to two people her age, even if it was about how she’d become the top story of Yuell High School’s TMZ chain. 

The short time in the stairwell still made her squint against the sunlight as she walked back onto the roof. As the door slammed shut behind her, she could hear the bell ring downstairs, echoing up to the roof. Reese and Theo had already made themselves comfortable, sitting in the shade of an umbrella propped up between their bookbags, and their lunch boxes in their laps. 

“Oh look, it’s Fine,” Theo smiled when he saw Marlena. “Glad to see you could join us.” 

“Hi again.” Marlena said shyly. Reese scooted over and patted the spot a spot of ground between she and Theo. Slowly, she walked over and sat down. “So, what’re you guys doing up here?” 

“We’re not here to jump if that’s what you’re worried about.” Theo said. 

“ _ Dude!”  _ Reese said through gritted teeth. 

“Has someone actually jumped from up here?” Marlena asked. 

“No, but everyone keeps thinking that someone will cause that stupid door’s never locked.” Reese continued. 

Marlena started to ask why, but was interrupted by Theo offering her an Oreo from a Ziploc bag. “Uh, no thanks.” 

“You sure? They’re double stuffed.” Theo said. 

Reese leaned forward and gave Theo an accusatory look. “When the hell did Yolanda start buying Double Stuffed?” 

Theo had an Oreo between his teeth and answered, “Since like last week. She told me not to tell you.” 

“What? Why?!” 

Marlena looked back and forth between the two of them, waiting for an answer that would explain this sudden feud over milk’s favorite cookie. 

“I dunno, her and your dad must be arguing again.” Theo answered. 

Reese reached across Marlena to snatch the bag away from Theo, and popped a cookie in her mouth before saying, “I can’t stand this family sometimes.” 

“You two cousins or something?” Marlena asked. 

Theo laughed dryly. “G-d, I wish.” 

“Stepsiblings,” Reese explained. “Our family’s a mess.”

Marlena couldn’t help but laugh at that. If all she had to deal with were step-siblings and some beef over Oreos, she’d never complain a day in her life. “You’ve got no idea what a messy family is.” Marlena said. 

“Oh yeah?” Theo smirked and turned to face Marlena. “Try me.” 

She swallowed dryly. Hill had told her to keep her cover straight, and that she could even make something up, no one was going to ask her about it. So much for that. “Uh,” she stumbled. 

“Unless you can somehow top my dad changing his last name to evade some weird shit about an illegal weed farm in Kansas back in the 90s, then I’m really doubting that your family can be that weird.” Reese said. 

“Or being excommunicated from your church because you accidentally drank holy water and your priest thought you were a demon.” Theo followed. 

“How do you even,” Marlena started to ask. 

“I was seven.” 

“Old enough to know the damn difference.” Reese said. 

“Whatever. What about you Marley? What’s up with you? Moved across country to escape some deadly family secret?”

_ Well, sorta. _ Marlena almost said. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders and said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” 

“Do we need to get to like a level seven friendship with you before we get your tragic backstory?” Reese asked, again, offering the bag of Oreos to her. This time, Marlena took one. 

“Yeah, I guess so.” 

Reese nodded and smiled. “Well then, guess we’re gonna be getting to know each other pretty well.”


End file.
